Shangri-La Frontier Season 2

Episode 29

A part of me was dreading this episode because I could tell within the first five minutes that it was going to be the type of episode that I disliked from season one. I am fine with watching a show where there aren't really any stakes and it's just a bunch of goobers running around playing a really immersive video game. However, my problem with season one of Shangri-La Frontier was that it put so much emphasis on the parts of watching someone else play a video game that genuinely were not interesting to me, like the grinding and the item gathering. However, this episode is the best example of how you can do that while still keeping things fairly interesting.

This episode served multiple purposes: it sets up and foreshadows things that will happen later on in the narrative, we go over things with the guilds, we establish that Bilac is probably gonna make some incredible weapon by the end of the series, and we even get a little bit more on those game updates. This episode balances giving us that information while also showcasing scenes of Sunraku gathering materials and leveling up his abilities. We're not just watching him grind for an arbitrary reason. Everything has a purpose to it, and I'm more emotionally invested in seeing him accomplish his smaller goals because I know that they are tying into a bigger one.

I feel like season one relied a lot more on not telling the audience what it was setting up so it would act as a more dramatic payoff when that information was revealed later. I would much rather the series handle things like how this episode did. Seeing Sunraku manipulate the game's physics engine is something that I am all too familiar with after just playing a bunch of Elden Ring with friends, and I also understand the frustration that comes with finding out that a game exploit gets patched. This episode simultaneously fed me as someone who wanted to see the narrative progress and as a video gamer. There isn't much left to say outside of just asking for more of this, please.

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Shangri-La Frontier is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.